Twitter rolls out Mute feature for all of its Web and Mobile Apps

SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter Inc. [NASDAQ:TWTR] has rolled out a new feature for its web and mobile applications that allows user to mute or silent the tweets coming from a twitter account on their timeline without unfollowing it.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past month, you would have noticed that Twitter has been on a roll lately, by making huge changes to its user interface, adding an option to “direct message” your follower and letting users to add a “Facebook like” cover photo to your timeline.

Adding to those changes and after a very short testing phase, Twitter has officially rolled out what seems to be a very useful feature dubbed “Mute”. As the name suggests, this new option enables you to mute a particular person’s tweets showing up on your twitter timeline.

Also in a clever move, the muted person does not actually know that he has been muted, so he or she could still continue sending out tweets about their love for Justin Bieber thinking that everyone still appreciates his taste for music.

In the official Twitter blog, the Product Manager Paul Rosania (twitter handle: @ptr) had this to say:

In the same way you can turn on device notifications so you never miss a Tweet from your favorite users, you can now mute users you’d like to hear from less. Muting a user on Twitter means their Tweets and Retweets will no longer be visible in your home timeline, and you will no longer receive push or SMS notifications from that user. The muted user will still be able to fave, reply to, and retweet your Tweets; you just won’t see any of that activity in your timeline. The muted user will not know that you’ve muted them, and of course you can unmute at any time.

We think that this is a nice move from Twitter because this feature does not unfollow the person, doesn’t let him know that you have committed such cruel thing against him and provides you an option between two extremes of either adding or blocking a user, which is always welcome. This mute feature also may prove to be of use when someone is live tweeting an event or tweeting about something you are simply not interested in.

To enable the mute feature, follow the instructions as specified by Paul – To mute a user from a Tweet on your iOS or Android device or on Twitter for web tap more and then mute @username. To mute someone from their profile page, tap the gear icon on the page and choose mute @username. The new feature combines Report and Block @username into a single button and takes up the space of Report @username button.It is to be noted that not every twitter user has got this option right now. It is planned to be a phased roll out, so if you don’t see this option in your settings, you can do nothing but wait for it to reach you in a few weeks’ time.